Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#31

Post by sdenton4 » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #9

It's a letter to AT&T that encourages them to do something about Fox and OANN. I'd say sure, do something about them, but let's also look inward. There was a lot of misinformation abound after the Capitol Riots that was simply there to stir up Democrats and a lot of this information was very racially angled. Though Democrats play up the death of the Capital police officer now, their constituents were absolutely promo…

It's much more gray than your presenting. There were numerous LEOs amongst the rioters, and many of the early videos people were seeing were cops taking selfies with rioters and cops standing to one side as the rioters walked in. Meanwhile the white House was slow footing any kind of response. The extent of the Capitol police resistance want really clear until things had settled down.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#32

Post by omgwtfbyobbq » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

surge wrote: post #10

BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel ." Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?

It pretty much is and is a chilling attempt at limiting speech. Free press, is free press. CNN and MSNBC both spread their share of misinformation. You need to be able to watch multiple news sources with different takes in a free society, to determine whose wrong or whose omitting key facts in an attempt to frame the news.

It may be. The key is whether the misinformation present directed others to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation.

CNN/MSNBC may also have misinformation, but their misinformation may not be in the same class, specifically something that could motivate some subset of their viewers to commit insurrection by attempting to detain and possibly murder elected representatives.

In either case, it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

Edited based on feedback.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#33

Post by bhupy » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #32

surge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty much is and is a chilling attempt at limiting speech. Free press, is free press. CNN and MSNBC both spread their share of misinformation. You need to be able to watch multiple news sources with different takes in a free society, to determine whose wrong or whose omitting key facts in an attempt to frame the news.

It may be. The key is whether the misinformation present directed others to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation. CNN/MSNBC may also have misinformation, but their misinformation may not be in the same class, specifically something that could motivate some subset of their viewers to commit insurr…

> To me, it could also be the modern day version of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation.

That legal argument has been overturned precisely because it has no real limiting principle: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#34

Post by garg » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #19

2 parts of this are interesting to me. The first is "House Democrats demand" - the government should not be regulating speech, even if it's false/dangerous/moronic. The letter is dumb and dangerous. The second is "Cable providers to censor misinformation" - infrastructure providers regulating speech sounds very similar to the whole Parler deplatforming. I wonder what my own reaction would be if cable companies indepe…

The government should be regulating the broadcast of false information that is blatant propaganda. Freedom of speech is not freedom to broadcast blatant lies to millions of people.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#35

Post by njharman » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people. Never the hands of authorities whether those be government or corporate.

Why must fight all censorship. Because once you allow "a thing" to be censored, it becomes possible to censor "any thing".

Things in the past which were labeled misinformation and would have been suppressed for even longer (or forever) under current social attitudes of censoring anything that might make us feel bad.

  - Leaded gasoline poisoning all of the country.
  - Tobacco is addicting and gives you cancer.
  - Agent Orange caused US military health problems.
  - PTSD is a mental health issue (denied since at least WWI).

Remember all the power/leeway you give to the "left" (or right) will also be misused when the "right" (or left) take power again.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#36

Post by jolux » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

garg wrote: post #30

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. There is no per-se demand, but there is a strong suggestion of expectation that these networks should be exerting some kind of pressure against the misinformation in shows they carry. Frankly it still seems pretty ridiculous to me.

Who do you think should exert pressure against networks that broadcast misinformation and propaganda to millions of people?

If anybody, it should be the public, not the government, from the perspective of constitutional law. In an ethical sense, I'm less sure, because I feel pretty certain that the networks named in these letters are harmful to the country and harmful to democracy, but I'm unsure about the relative costs in the long-term of government intervention here. The ruling party attacking opposition media is never a good look, no matter how toxic said media is.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#37

Post by rayiner » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

The letter complains about Fox and OANN's partisan and inflammatory rhetoric, with supporting citations to sources on the left who trade heavily in partisan and inflammatory rhetoric. Just three citations in you get to Karen Attiah, Washington Post's Global Opinions Editor: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/29/karen-attia...

> “White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s,’ and not calling for revenge,” Ms. Attiah tweeted to her 185,000 followers Sunday evening.

> “Non, je ne regrette rien,” she wrote in another tweet, making it clear she had no regrets.

Regarding misinformation, Rachel Maddow has suffered no negative consequences for jumping on every Trump-related conspiracy theory to pop up in the last four years: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-rachel-maddow-is-on-the-co...

> From there, the floodgates opened. “Commentary television is not news,” snapped David Cay Johnston of the New York Times, himself just days removed from saying on Democracy Now! that “I think [Trump] is a Russian agent.”

> He added: “Rachel Maddow in particular has certainly pushed the Mueller matter,” doing so in conjunction with “the facts at the time.” However, he said, her work was “driven by the commercial values of television.”

It's fair to say that Maddow has an opinion show, not a news show. But that distinction doesn't seem to matter to the Congresspeople who wrote the letter here--they suggest censoring Fox News, which accurately reported the election results and Supreme Court developments. The conspiracy theories, such as they were, came from some of the opinion hosts.

Make no mistake. Whether it's "inflammatory" speech or "misinformation"--these rules will not be applied even-handedly. Such rules are not even amenable to even-handed application.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#38

Post by blacktriangle » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #21

tarboreus wrote: post #16

Is anyone finding this terrifying? When did democrafts, the party I vote for, become the people calling for tight censorship in every sector? Weren't the last people to make this move (more more ineffectively, thankfully) the Christian right? Is there something we can do to stand up for speech?

Democrats were proponents of free speech when Republicans controlled the media, culture, and institutions. Increasingly, the media, culture, and institutions are controlled by progressive Democrats (and I think there is a growing schism between liberals and progressives on this front), and traditional liberal ideas of the free exchange of information have no more value.

Which is exactly why no matter where you land politically, you should be 100% in favor of fighting for free speech for yourself and the other side.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#39

Post by sleepysysadmin » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #3

I suppose they mean disinfo and not misinfo? seems like a slippery slope when one can't trust their own people to be able to distinguish between facts/non-facts, so much that one needs laws to ban certain types of content and prevent it from being seen. makes me wonder if this will not even cause further conspiracy and drive traffic to alternative (underground e.g. outlawed) information channels pretty hard to draw a…

>I suppose they mean disinfo and not misinfo?

misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies

PDF says all of the above. Obviously the democrats are the ones who will define what's a lie. Any Americans here think it's appropriate to allow the democrat party to define what's a lie and then have it censored?

"Right-wing media outlets, like Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Fox News"

It's interesting that the democrat government is pressuring ATT to deplatform their political opponents.

>seems like a slippery slope when one can't trust their own people to be able to distinguish between facts/non-facts, so much that one needs laws to ban certain types of content and prevent it from being seen. makes me wonder if this will not even cause further conspiracy and drive traffic to alternative (underground e.g. outlawed) information channels

I have never in my life seen such a political divide in the USA. It's very much like during the Vietnam war. Afterall the USA has now been at war longer than it ever has been.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#40

Post by zests » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #32

surge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty much is and is a chilling attempt at limiting speech. Free press, is free press. CNN and MSNBC both spread their share of misinformation. You need to be able to watch multiple news sources with different takes in a free society, to determine whose wrong or whose omitting key facts in an attempt to frame the news.

It may be. The key is whether the misinformation present directed others to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation. CNN/MSNBC may also have misinformation, but their misinformation may not be in the same class, specifically something that could motivate some subset of their viewers to commit insurr…

You can compare yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to a lot of speech, for example, speech that is against a military draft. This was the original comparison.

Luckily we (the United States) prevent our government from restricting this type of speech.